Shell Shocked: The new City Council springs into action
Now that the City Council election is behind us and the results are in, Sanibel can move forward with its aggressive agenda for the next several years.
Many important public policies had been put on hold awaiting the outcome of this pivotal election. All five City Council members have pledged to put these long awaited policies high on the agenda for their next meeting.
1. Painting a new white line down Sanibel Captiva Road. The protests and demonstrations can now subside. Focus is back. Sanibel will no longer be deprived of a newly painted white line. This initiative has been accommodated for in the new budget and painting will begin just after high season. Once again, Sanibel residents should be able to drive safely with a highly visible new line down the middle of the road. Cataracts will no longer serve as an excuse.
2. Planting rare sea shells on the beach. This long neglected civic duty can now be resuscitated once again. Countless tourist dollars have been lost since the election campaign started by tossing this tourist bait to the side in favor of such loftier campaign promises as giving egrets equal access to Periwinkle. There have been fewer photos in island newspapers showing Ohio housewives holding up Juconias, those rare transplanted sea shells imported from Pier 1 Imports. The cheaper Juconias were out of stock at Walmart, having been bought up by the wise elders of Bonita Springs.
3. Alligators over the size of 6 feet will once again be transported to Skull Island to join King Kong and his tall pals. A 6-foot alligator was recently seen at the bar of Doc Ford’s sipping a Gray Goose on the rocks. Most people watched from the safety of Bailey’s.
4. Billy’s Bicycle Rentals has been asked to limit its customers to 50,000 a day. Billy’s bicycles are very popular because all tires have air in them. Billy’s is now also featuring driverless bicycles which will do all your shopping for you.
5. Sun tans derived from Sanibel beaches will once again be taxed and the proceeds will go to turtle nesting. The City Council has long felt that visitors deriving deep tans from our Sanibel sun should pay their fair share of our taxes. The four candidates running for City Council all dropped their endorsement of this tax provision fearing that they would be seen going out on a limb. But this put our beach sun tax collectors out of work for a number of months. All they could do was wait out the election and keep their sun tax meters oiled and ready to go.
6. CROW will now take new endangered species including babaloobas, crickcracks, festoons, leakos and bestions. These little known species hang around the former Doc Ford’s building waiting for parasites to devour. All the parasites have split from this building and gone to Mucky Duck’s in Captiva. The endangered species sit around and mope and reminisce about better days. CROW will now be their salvation.
7. And, finally, the name of Periwinkle will be changed to Millard Fillmore Way after the beloved nineteenth century president who is credited with the famous expression: “Let them eat blackened fish.” His homespun homily was the impetus for Sanibel’s future growth and mosquito control. The City Council is finally giving recognition where it is due. While it is true that F. Lee Bailey is the founder of Sanibel, Millard Fillmore is considered its idiot savant a man who had a word for everything, including balaboolas and crickcracks.
The newly formed City Council has its work cut out for it. Times are indeed changing and the road to progress will now be through Millard Fillmore Way.
-Art Stevens is a long-time columnist for The Islander. His tongue-in-cheek humor is always offered with a smile.